Charlie West
by AndIllWriteYouATragedy
Summary: My submission for the Save Undershaw collection. A young Sherlock Holmes and John Watson skip school to attempt to solve the murder of a classmate. Well, John says they'll attempt it; Sherlock says they'll succeed at it.


******'So, without further gilding the lily and with no more ado, I give to you,' the story!**

* * *

John Watson had developed a sixth sense. Now, his senses consisted of being able to see, hear, smell, taste, touch, and tell when Sherlock Holmes had a plan that could potentially kill both of them. Whether that death was going to be social, mental, emotional, or legitimately physical, however, John was never sure.

Unfortunately for John, this means that warm, dreadful Tuesday morning, when Sherlock slid into the passenger seat of John's beaten old Chevrolet Nova, John immediately felt nerves and excitement twist his stomach. He and Sherlock had been neighbors ever since John could remember - though Sherlock could probably name the date and time they became neighbors - and now that the two were seniors, and John had gotten his license, Sherlock appeared beside him every morning to be taken to school.

At eighteen, John had lost nearly all of the chubbiness of boyhood, and being captain of the Scotland High School rugby team, the Yarders, definitely helped with his muscle tone. While he was strong, tanned from the sun beating down on his practices, blonde with blue eyes, and relatively popular with the girls, Sherlock had a lankier frame, pale skin that was barely underlit by the flush of passing blood at times, dark hair with darker eyes, and only had met one girl who had relatively interested him at all. That girl had been the mysterious Irene Adler, who had appeared, stole a chunk of Sherlock's heart and more than that of his innocence, and then promptly vanished. Sherlock hardly speaks of her, and John doesn't bring her up; anyways, John was still busy with trying to court one of the journalists for the school newspaper, Mary Morstan.

"Charlie West is dead." Sherlock murmured after he shut the door, before John could even say hello. John stopped halfway through throwing the car into gear and stared at Sherlock, open-mouthed.

"What?" John asked finally, his voice quiet. Sherlock looked up at John, a small frown creasing his face.

"Charlie West was found dead. It was on the news." Sherlock leaned forward and flicked the radio on, tuning it from John's usual classic rock to a local news station. "They believe it to be a suicide. She was found in the park with her wrists slit, she bled out."

"Oh, no, that's terrible. She was in our Forensics class, Sherlock." John let his hand fall from the gearshift as he slumped back in his seat. "I can't believe she'd kill herself like that."

"That's because she didn't." Sherlock straightened up and shut the news off when it was clear they weren't going to give him any new information. "Drive to the park, please, John."

A number of objections scrolled through John's mind, among them "You have debate today," "We have_ classes_, Sherlock," and "For a _dead_ _body_, Sherlock?" among them, but he just nodded and threw the car into gear.

"What'll we be doing there, then?" John asked after a long moment of driving silently. Sherlock pushed down the edges of his jacket's collar with his jaw, keeping his gaze down, his hooked nose protruding downward from his face. He was scribbling furiously in one of the many ratty notebooks he carried in that leather bag of his, not letting John distract him. When he finished writing his scrawling notes, he turned his head up to John, his beady eyes dark brown, bright, and wider than usual with excitement.

"We're going to figure out why it is that Charlie was murdered." Sherlock told his companion, his voice causing John's skin to crawl with a twisted anticipation. "And, yes, John, she certainly was murdered. Her and that wretched girlfriend of hers were planning on moving out to Kentucky or someplace equally as absurd. I like Charlie, she's a very nice girl, and she doesn't lie when she shouts at us."

"She was_ talking_ with us, not shouting at us." John pulled his chugging car around to the sidewalk outside the park. "What exactly are we looking to find?"

"Just follow my lead." Sherlock reached into his bag and groped around in it before pulling out two police badges. John raised an eyebrow as he yanked the keys out of the ignition.

"And where'd you get those?" John asked as Sherlock handed one of the badges to John.

"Took them off Mycroft this morning. He won't miss them." Sherlock took a deep breath. "Do you think her... that her family will be there?"

"I can talk to them if they are. You can just do what you need to do." John studied Sherlock's expression, staring at his face until Sherlock felt the eyes on him and looked up. "It'll be alright. We've done this before."

"It'll be different. We knew Charlie." Sherlock shut his eyes, effectively breaking eye contact with John, and taking a deep, steadying breath. "We will find who killed her."

"_If_ she was killed." John reminded him. Sherlock smiled slightly.

"No, we _will_ find out who killed her, John." Sherlock opened his eyes and his door in one fluid motion, leaving John to hurry out after him.

John finally caught up with Sherlock as he tried to push his way into the crime scene, flashing his badge at anyone who questioned him. John fumbled with his for a bit, but kept his face straight enough that they let him through. Amidst the confusion, however, Sherlock's voice swearing rang clear.

"What the _hell_ are you doing here, Moriarty?" Sherlock spat at the offending man. James Moriarty, a thin, dark man who was co-captain of the debate team with Sherlock, and, according to Sherlock, was his enemy. Honestly, to put it into the simple terms of high school, James was a bully. It wasn't so much he that did the physical bullying as it was his partner in crime, Sebastian Moran, muscled, tanned, and blonde, just like John. Sebastian was on John's rugby team, but John still didn't seem to have any comradery with the kid.

"I heard about our poor Charlie and just had to check this out." James tsked and leaned against a birch tree. Sebastian shifted subconsciously, like a planet in orbit, making sure Sherlock didn't make any moves against James. John rolled his eyes.

"You could care less. Leave. I'm sure you have classes that Sebastian couldn't afford to miss." John all but snarled. Sherlock stood up a little straighter beside John, bringing him up to his full height at about seven inches taller than his five-foot-five companion.

"I'll see you this afternoon, Shirley, darling." James reached forward and tickled underneath Sherlock's chin for a second before Sherlock jerked his head away, lips twisted in disgust.

"Don't touch me." Sherlock growled, his low voice infinitely more menacing than it had been when he was shouting. James just stood there, staring calmly up into Sherlock's eyes, his face twisted into a smile.

"You're right. I'll leave that to John." James threw a grin at the rugby captain, who refused to return it, opting for just glaring angrily. He felt his hands ball into fists, and Sebastian stepped forward as a reaction.

"Let's just go, Jim." Sebastian said in a low voice to his short partner. James nodded and blew a kiss to Sherlock before leaving without another word. Sebastian made eye contact with John before turning to follow, and John let out a long breath, running a hand through his messy hair.

"Luckily we won't have to deal with him much longer, right, Sherlock?" John commented, turning to laugh with Sherlock, but his friend had already vanished beneath the lemon-colored police tape to kneel beside the body. John breathed in deeply through his nose before following Sherlock.

The body of Charlie West was, by far, the worst sight John had ever seen, and Sherlock had brought him along on some fairly gruesome cases. Her ginger hair was spread across her face and into the soft mud, her curvy body curled in on itself. Her wrists were slit vertically from beneath her palms to her elbows, and the earth was soaked with blood. John swallowed thickly and followed along after Sherlock.

"She was left-handed, John." Sherlock murmured. He held his hand up, and John fished about in the depths of his coat pockets for a moment before coming up with one of the pairs of latex gloves Sherlock had him keep on his person for the arising of just such a situation. He laid them in Sherlock's palm, and Sherlock snapped them onto his hands before tenderly lifting her left arm nearer to his face to examine as he crouched beside her. "This may be the quickest case I've ever solved. There is no possible way she could have cut both of her forearms, not like this."

"Let me see." John requested after a moment, pulling on his own pair of gloves and bending down. Sherlock passed her arm over gently, and John twisted the limb slowly to examine her wound. "You're certain she was left-handed?"

"Positive. I've seen her take notes many times." Sherlock answered, shuffling around the body and turning his attention to her other arm. "What are your conclusions, Doctor?"

"I'm not a doctor until I graduate from medical school and get all that business done with, Sherlock." John reminded him absently, the familiarity of correcting Sherlock when he used the fond nickname something he no longer even thought about. "She couldn't've have made this perfect an incision with her right hand, and she definitely could not have made a second incision on the opposite arm after something so deep."

"Hey, Detective!" A young man, sandy-haired and bright-eyed, approached them, ducking under the tape and handing a note to Sherlock. Sherlock exchanged his gloves with another set in John's pocket to avoid cross-contamination before taking the note carefully. "She wrote this note. Guess it was suicide after all. Odd place for it, don't you think?"

John looked up at the rambling young officer, his attention drawn away from the arm briefly. "Thank you for bringing it to us, Officer..."

"Lestrade. I'm new." Officer Lestrade twitched his hand out for a moment before laughing nervously and drawing it back. "I'd shake your hand, but...your hand's all bloody."

John laughed and offered the nervous man, who couldn't be much older than John himself, a reassuring smile. The man smiled back and left when the chief called him.

"Officer Lestrade is going places. He should be chief by the time he's thirty-five." Sherlock commented before bending down beside John to show his companion the note. "What strikes you as odd about this note, John?"

John placed Charlie's arm back on the ground gingerly and read over the note. He shrugged when he finished it, trying not to let his emotions leak through. "Well, there's not much...seems like any other suicide note you've showed me before."

"Look at the_ handwriting_, Doctor." Sherlock instructed. John ignored the nickname this time and examined the handwriting on the note closely.

"This is your ballpark, Sherlock, not mine. I don't know what's wrong with it." John sighed, leaning back so he rested on his heels. Sherlock groaned in frustration before thrusting the note back in front of John's face.

"John Hamish Watson, just _look_. Humor me." Sherlock asked, clearly exasperated. John switched his pair of gloves out as Sherlock had done earlier and took the note from Sherlock, holding it closer to his face and squinting at the writing.

"I don't know, it looks...shaky, I suppose." John said after a long moment, looking up at Sherlock. "Did it get it right?"

"Yes, precisely, Doctor." Sherlock straightened up, taking the note from John as his blonde companion rolled his eyes and followed suit. "Her handwriting is shaky. I've seen her handwriting, she's much neater. She would have been nervous writing this, and I have never once heard a case where a person who sounds this _decided_ about their own suicide in their suicide letter was nervous even in the slightest. She must have been forced to write it, John, can't you see?"

"Oh, yes." John agreed under his breath. "I believe you're right, Sherlock."

Whatever reply Sherlock was about to articulate was cut off by a long shriek, followed by a string of screamed words from a frantic girl on the sidelines. Both of the boys' heads jerked around at the noise, and they found Charlie's brunette, heavyset girlfriend, Michelle Abbey, kneeling on the ground beside the birch tree Moriarty had recently been leaning against. She was sobbing into her hands, and the words she was trying to get out took John a moment to recognize.

"I didn't think he'd ever do it, I _swear_, he wrote the letters but he's just a_ kid_!" She was wailing, her voice cracking the higher it got. Sherlock rushed to her side, darting under the police tape to kneel beside her.

"You didn't think who would do what, Michelle?" Sherlock asked urgently. Almost as an afterthought, he put a comforting arm around her, pulling her closer. John knew he didn't like Michelle too much, finding her gossiping and rumor-spreading dreadful, but anyone could understand that this was too much for one person to bear seeing.

"Rich...Rich something, Richard...Richard Swinger, that guy, that sophomore, he's been writing me letters, he wanted to be with me, he kept saying he'd kill Charlie to get it!" Michelle cried, turning and burying her face in Sherlock's neck, throwing her arms around him. Sherlock rubbed her back quietly until John got the hint and knelt down beside the both of them. Sherlock passed Michelle to his friend and stood up, brushing off the dirt from his coat.

"I'll be back, John. I'm going to consult with the policemen briefly." Sherlock turned quickly and sped away, speaking rapidly to Lestrade and an older officer standing beside him. John turned his attention back to the sobbing junior in his arms, trying to calm her down. It didn't take very long for Sherlock to return to them as several policemen returned to their cruisers and sped away, lights flashing and sirens screaming as they drove away. Sherlock rushed back over to John, bending over and putting a hand on his companion's shoulder.

"John, you and I, along with Michelle here, must tag along with the policemen." Sherlock met Michelle's eyes when she lifted her head. "I called your parents, Michelle. They'll meet us at the station, okay?"

Michelle nodded and allowed Sherlock to help her up, clinging to him to assist her in walking, as well. John took up the rear, exchanging a glance with Sherlock as his watch beeped to inform that it was only eight in the morning. John almost wanted to laugh at the absurdity.

* * *

It had turned out Sherlock was right, and that was the fastest case they'd solved thus far. When they brought in Richard for questioning, he confessed nearly immediately, and Sherlock declared this case as completed and Richard as too weak to be a criminal they'll ever need to deal with again. John followed him out of the station, leading the way on the walk back to the park. He checked his watch briefly and looked up at the sun's position in the sky, squinting against the light.

"This was hardly worth our time, that could've been figured out without my help easily." Sherlock muttered, his hands entwined behind his back, walking beside his companion. John turned his eyes, narrowed against the tilt of the harsh afternoon sun, to Sherlock.

"Maybe they wouldn't have even known it wasn't a suicide without you showing up. That's worth something, Detective." John commented, bumping his shoulder into Sherlock's. When Sherlock remained quiet, John made the decision to fill the silence. "It's almost three, no point in heading for school anymore."

"Mycroft said he'd call us in sick. You don't have to go to practice, I don't have to go to debate." Sherlock's face twitched into a half-smile. "Which is phenomenal, because the thought of facing James on a good day is sickening."

John laughed once. "Same with Moran. What a dick."

"No, Dick was a dick." Sherlock's lips grew into an honest smile, and John started laughing again.

"Is it terrible for us to already make jokes about that murderer?" John asked once he had regained proper breathing. Sherlock shrugged, turning his head while he walked to catch John's eyes. The two friends started laughing again.

"That kid deserves worse than our jokes. And he'll get it, there's no doubt." Sherlock answered. "Do you have plans tonight?"

"I was going to ask Mary if she wanted to study together or something." John began. Sherlock turned his face back away, the sunlight catching oddly on his hooked nose. "...But since I wasn't even in school today, so I don't see much point to that."

"Fantastic. We'll be seeing a movie, then." Sherlock said simply. John redirected his gaze forward again, shaking his head.

"No, I am _definitely_ not letting that happen again. If we're seeing a movie, I'm choosing it, Sherlock." John informed him, deliberately bumping into his friend as they walked. Sherlock stumbled before catching himself.

"If that's your only condition, then I accept." Sherlock agreed. John smiled as they reached the car. He yanked his own door open at the same time Sherlock was able to easily open his, despite the fact that both of them stuck. The two of them slid into the car, slamming the doors behind them.

"We're going to see _Star Trek 2_, I hope you know that." John informed Sherlock as they buckled themselves in. Sherlock sighed heavily and leaned back against his seat, turning to gaze out the window as John drove off down the street.

"The game is on, then." Sherlock commented absently. John nodded, stretching one of his arms around the back of Sherlock's seat, feeling that, though his sixth sense was right, he wouldn't trade it for all the sanity in the world.


End file.
